The three patents Microsoft is hammering the Nook with—and why they may be invalid
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Microsoft's complaint against Barnes & Noble's Android-based Nook devices has been narrowed down to just three patents, with the US International Trade Commission having to decide whether Nook devices infringe on several patented methods of interacting with and downloading electronic documents. Barnes & Noble is also asking the ITC to declare the patents invalid because they cover obvious and trivial functionality.
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Microsoft's ITC complaint, which was filed in March 2011 and targets Foxconn and Inventec in addition to Barnes & Noble, cited five patents. One 1994 patent related to "new varieties of child window controls [that] are provided as system resources that application programs may exploit," and a 1997 patent related to how browsers load and display content in portable computers with limited display areas have since been dropped from the case.
An ITC staff attorney revealed Monday that he is recommending a ruling stating that Barnes & Noble did not infringe the three remaining Microsoft patents, but a final decision is not scheduled to be revealed until April 27. The ruling will be an important one in Microsoft's quest to extract money from every Android hardware vendor. Samsung, HTC, Acer, LG, and others have signed patent licensing agreements with Microsoft. Amazon—which uses Android for its Kindle Fire tablet but not for the Kindle e-readers—signed a patent agreement with Microsoft in February 2010 which includes a license to one of the patents being asserted by Microsoft against Barnes & Noble. Full Story |
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